Not Exactly Sleep Walking

Sleep is a precious thing. Long ago I tied a good night’s sleep to a healthier life. Getting enough sleep not only gives me fewer hours in the day to eat, but also I tend to make better choices if I have had enough sleep. But knowing that sleep is important and staying asleep are not connected. In fact, I sometimes think they are diabolically opposed to each other.

Take this morning for example. Russ is in California. I heard something outside my house at 4:30 in the morning that was loud enough to wake me up.   I am not a skittish person. Normally it takes a lot to scare me. Since I was awake at 4:30 I did what any middle aged woman would do, get up and use the bathroom. I lay back down in bed so I could go back to sleep, another loud noise.

Now my mind started running through all the possibilities, a tree branch, ten acorns falling in unison, a pair of randy squirrels, an intruder, a masked man, a robber with a gun, an Isis battalion. I was full on awake. I reached above my head to flip on the Stalag 13 type outdoor lights that encircle our house. They are so powerful the circuit breaker that supplies current to them makes a loud humming sound that can be heard from the garage throughout the house.

I peered out my bedroom window to see if I could catch a glimpse of the would be assassins running from my yard. Of course I only saw large branches swaying in the wind. Weather, boy is it loud.

I released the switch that lit the neighborhood and the house was plunged back into darkness. It was still just 4:45, plenty of time to fall back asleep and get some meaningful shuteye before the seven AM bell rang.

BAM! I was up. Why bother trying to go back to sleep when I was in a much better state to protect my home up and ready to tackle anything. I decided that since I had such a busy day and even busier week ahead of me I best should get as many steps in on the treadmill as I could before it was time to take Carter to school.

Amazingly I think my walking is much more productive at this ridiculously early hour than it is when I am tired from a full day. I logged over 12,000 steps before I ever took one step outside my front door. I got nine miles in two hours before lunch. I am on my way to a 30,000-step day.

Yes, I am exhausted. Yes, I am really looking forward to my bed tonight. No, I can’t go there until after my Mah Jongg class ends at 10 PM. I still have no idea what the noise was that woke me. Perhaps it was a higher power pushing me to do what was good for me. But wait, I thought sleep was good for me.

A Big Gay Day In North Carolina

At last I live in a state where all couples are free to marry whomever they love. I am thrilled that this day has finally come to pass, but am not proud that we got here because the court forced a repeal to the backward Amendment one. I wish that our populous was enlightened enough to agree that all people deserve the same rights regardless of their sexual orientation.

Young people are to thank for the quickly changing opinions about the LGBTQ society. To kids in my daughter’s generation they don’t see what the big deal is and for them I am thankful.

Long ago, when I worked for my Dad in marketing he had a mantra, “The young will eat the old.” He considered himself old back then, but he was always quick to teach me that the world changes fast based on the direction young people are going and if you want to be successful and leading edge you go where the young are going.

This is a lesson state government should learn. We can’t be a place governed by old men. We need to listen to what young people believe because like it or not it is their world. If we try and hold on to old-fashioned ways they will leave and without young people a place dies.

Hooray that we are changing here. Allowing people to legally commit themselves to each other strengthens a society. It also is good for business. Weddings are big revenue and I hope that my gay, bi, and lesbian friends who are interested in getting hitched throw some really big parties. You deserve it.

Now one note of caution, just because you can marry does not mean you must marry. Divorce is expensive and heart breaking. To all the children of gay and lesbian couples, you always were a family, but now I am happy that the law is catching up with the love you have.

To anyone who is having trouble with this change in the law, don’t worry, no one is going to force you to marry a gay person, who really is just a person, you just have a choice. Something not everyone had before. And here is the really good news, if your child turns out to be gay, lesbian, bi or whatever they won’t feel like a second -class citizen in the eyes of the law.

Not How I Look, But How I Make You Feel

This morning I went to a talk at Carter’s school given by Jean Kilbourne who is an authority on the image of women in advertising. She opened the discussion by showing us a fifteen minute film of a Ted X talk she had given on the topic. She clearly is an expert on the subject, but I have to say that many of the examples she showed us were very old ads. The parent talk was in advance of the one she was going to be giving to our children later today.

When I picked Carter up from school I asked her what she thought of the presentation. She remarked that the ads Jean used in her talk seemed dated and not as relevant to the world Carter lives in now.   We talked about the Dove real beauty ads and how much of the ad world is coming to appreciate what real people look like. But quickly we got to the issue of how someone makes you feel and not what he or she look like.

I have no Photoshop skills; I don’t even have the program on my computer. Although I appreciate judicious cropping of a photo, mostly so you can get a closer look at someone’s face, I don’t like the idea of changing how someone looks in a photo. In all the photos on this blog I actually do almost the opposite. I put photos with poor lighting, unattractive positions and real life full body shots so when someone sees me in person they think I look better than my blog.

Why in the world would someone Photoshop an unrealistic picture of himself or herself to the point of being unrecognizable in real life. If we only put beautiful pictures out in the universe it may inhibit our desire to actually go out in the world and be seen live. I don’t want to have try and live up to myself. I just want to be myself. I also don’t want my existence to be tied to my image, but rather to the way I make someone feel.

The point that Carter and I came to together after our exposure to the subject is that we are happy being ourselves. I love that my daughter takes crazy selfies and posts “weird” pictures. We are who we are both in 2-D and in real life. If you see one you will recognize the other. No retouching, improving, airbrushing, or photoshopping.

This is my glasses on, end of day, no hair brushed, little makeup, bad lighting selfie. What I hope is that in person I appear a little better because I am making you laugh because of what I am saying or make you feel good about yourself because I am asking you about yourself. I don’t care if you think I look better than my picture. I care that I make you feel something, and hopefully that feeling is positive.

The Cheese Is The Thing

Most of my friends who have dogs in their families tell me stories about how their dog is like a vacuum for food dropped on the ground or that no matter what they put in their dog’s food bowl it gets sucked down in a blink of an eye with a follow up begging look that says, “Is that all I am getting?” If I were a dog that is the kind of dog I would be too. Not so discerning about quality and very interested in quantity. Ok, maybe a little interested in quality.

Now our dog is not in that normal dog camp. If most dogs are a live-to-eat Shay Shay is an eat-to-live type dog. Picky is putting mildly how she acts at the majority of food placed in her bowl.

When Shay was a puppy and first moved into her forever home we thought maybe she missed her mother and that is why she refused to eat all of the fifteen kinds of foods we gave her. She would look at a bowl of kibble, barely sniff it and walk away. Not a taste or a nibble. We tried wet, dry, soft, raw, and every combination.

Eventually we found a sensitive stomach blend she would try, but actual eating a whole bowl was rare. Now don’t get me wrong, she is healthy and active, but she definitely has retained her girlish figure.

My attitude is if she gets hungry enough she will chose to eat rather than die. Russ on the other hand hates the thought that his precious baby might be hungry. He has been known to leave the house late in the evening and go to Harris Teeter and buy her a whole cooked chicken that he then will shred with his bare hands and scatter over the sensitive stomach blend. This she likes.

When Russ is out of town I must admit I begin to worry if she goes a day or two without a regular meal. I have discovered that a pinch of Swiss and Gruyere blend shredded cheese sprinkled over her Bill and Jack’s dry food will induce her to eat. It is so much cleaner for me to spoon out a bit of cheese rather than getting chicken fat up under my fingernails and she seems to eat about the same amount and with the same gusto.

It got me thinking that I like everything I eat better with cheese. I bet that if you were to melt that same shredded blend on a piece of cardboard I probably would love it. So maybe what I need to do is to remove cheese from my diet and see if I feel as lack luster about my meals as Shay Shay does. I like Jarlsburg cheese in my scrambled eggs, Blue in my daily arugula salad, goat as a dessert at night. I am sure that cheese makes up the largest percentage of my daily calories. It is the last vice I have not given up, oh yeah and Sweet ‘n low in my iced tea. I will eat chicken everyday for the rest of my life as long as I have cheese. I could forgo ice cream forever as long as Brie is still in my diet.

So can I blame my dog for not wanting to eat, heavens forbid, dog food? I have no idea who first introduced her to cheese, but if it happened before she came to live with us I can understand why she was holding out on eating unless there was cheese, or chicken in a pinch. I guess I have not gotten desperate enough to drop those last five pounds by giving up cheese all together. I somehow feel like my world would turn from Technicolor to sepia if I did.

For now I guess I could use my desire to have my dog stay alive by giving her a bit of cheese on her meal as my excuse to have a big drawer of cheese in my fridge. If only I had someone doling out my portion as just a sprinkle on my veggies.

If I Lent You Something Can You Bring It Back

I am getting old enough that I can’t remember who I lend things too, but not so old that I don’t remember having them in the first place. It stinks.

Today I am setting up for Mah Jongg Class. I go to my storage space to get my three card tables and when I only find two I remember that I lent out my best black card table. When and to whom I can’t recall, but I do remember pulling it out and wiping it off for someone. Do you think there is such a thing as borrowers face blindness?

I also lent someone my Jamie Oliver Italy cookbook. I know it was at least a year ago, more like two. Who it was I have no idea. I’m sure I did not have my name in it, but the sad thing is with all my cookbooks you would think I just would not need it, but I do. My long term memory is good enough to know I did have it and I recollect giving it to someone, but what they look like, where I know them from or even their name I can’t call to mind.

I think I am going to have to set up a lending card system like the old fashioned library used to have when I was a kid. I don’t mind lending things, but sometimes I need to get them back usually right as I am needing them.

My friend Anne told me that her neighbor came by her house to return a book of Swedish fables he had borrowed at least twenty years ago. When she told me about this she said, “What do I need that for now, even my Grandchildren are grown up.”

I am sure I have lent out other things that have not come back and that I have not missed yet. If you have something of mine and it is not the black card table or Italy book just keep it, I’m not missing it, unless I lent you a thousand dollars, then bring it back in small bills.

Now if I have borrowed something from you let me know. The same face blindness for borrowers works for lenders too. One caveat, I know I have not borrowed a thousand dollars from anyone so don’t think you can trick me on that one.

The Toms Trump

I may have been sworn to non-celebration events for Russ’ birthday, but our friends Lynn and Logan Toms took no such oath not to acknowledge the half-century mark. In true Tom’s fashion they gathered good friends and fellow Carolina fans for a football game outing with full on tailgate extravaganza Logan style.

Logan being a true object of courtesy when it comes to entertaining did all the advance recon. Not only did he and Lynn provide the tickets, 50-yard line for the girls and blue zone for the guys, but also he and Lynn brought the food and more drinks than a bar full of drunks could consume in a week. In the perfect host world of Logan Toms he researches exactly, to the brand, what all his guests might want to drink and makes sure that he has iced down to the correct temperature the makings for each person’s ideal refreshment.

When we got in the car this morning to go to the game he told Russ that he had also arranged a fly over in honor of his birthday, but Russ was not to be fooled by the cover of Military Appreciation. Turns out to be truer than Logan thought.

We arrived at the very special parking deck and parked in the spot that Logan favors since it has large openings to the outdoors to bring light to our tailgate and is right behind Kenan stadium. Once all the savory fare was set up we enjoyed a toast or two to Russ.

Since we were having such a fine time in the parking deck we missed the opening of the game and the very special fly over, but not the All Veteran Group’s parachute jump into the stadium. We could hear the roar of the crowd, but our beverages held our attention.

We were about to pack up and head into the game when four guys and two women dressed in their parachute jumpsuits came out of the stadium and walked up to their van parked just outside our opening in the parking deck. We struck up a conversation with the vets who now run a group who not just jump out of planes at sporting events, but take disable vets up in planes and do tandem jumps with them as a healing exercise.

They were a cool group and we shared our tailgate with them and heard some great stories about their organization. You can see what they do at www.allveterangroup.com. If you ever saw the jump George Bush Sr. did for his 80^th birthday then you saw these guys. Being late to the game paid off.

Eventually we did go in and watch Virginia Tech run all over the heels, but the weather was fantastic, the company was perfect and the hosts were generous. I don’t think Russ can complain that someone celebrated in his name. Thanks to Lynn and Logan, Rich and Susan and Hannah and Mick. It was a great day.

No All-Nighters For Me

I am a lightweight and a mess. Last night I got home just before two from driving Carter and her friend to the concert in Charlotte. I had drunk enough coffee to keep an army awake so even though it was hours past my regular bedtime it took me until three in the morning to wind down and actually go to sleep.

Fast forward four short hours and my alarm was gonging its Big Ben tone and it was time to wake the girls for school. After dropping them off I went to my regular appointment with my trainer and home to walk. I could have gone back to bed I was so wiped out, but I soldiered on to two appointments and picked Carter back up from school.

At five in the afternoon I could take it no longer and I passed out on my bed, reading glasses perched on my nose, every light in the room on. If it weren’t for the phone ringing I would still be asleep, but two hours after I passed out I got up to write.

I am more of a dishrag now than I was before my unplanned nap. I don’t know how Carter went to school, turned in a paper, took a quiz and attended classes without a complaint. She made herself dinner, did her homework, fed the fish she is caring for at a neighbor’s house and when she saw me awake told me to go back to bed. I’m now the lightweight. The roles have been reversed.

Back to bed I go. Certainly I will recover after one full night of extra long sleep. I did not even go to the concert. I did not stand screaming at two different boy bands for six hours. I just drove the car. Old age has set in.

My Grandparent’s Diet Tips

Dieting is not a new thing, but the need to watch what we eat has grown as access to food has increased. Hundreds of years ago the food supply was not as consistent as it is now. The lack of refrigeration or ability to transport food long distances meant that people were a little more careful about what they were consuming.

My Paternal Grandmother used to “can” produce that she and my Grandfather grew. I can remember fondly eating stewed tomatoes she had put up from the summer before. The amount of work it took her to grow the tomatoes, pick them, skin them and cook them down into the stewed form, sterilize the jars, pack them and then seal them took not just hours but days. No wonder she used to dole out the precious fruit to us as if it were gold. There was no way we would get fat on one spoonful.

If I had to live on what I could grow, can, put up freeze, catch, kill, find, hunt or gather I would be the thinnest person on earth. My father was born in 1938 so was just a little boy during the War. I can remember him telling me about how he was in charge of killing the chickens for Sunday dinner when he was five years old. I say chickens plural because he used to tell me this story in relation to the preacher coming to Sunday dinner — my father’s immediate family got to split one chicken among the four of them and the preacher got a whole chicken to himself.   I bet this made an impact on my father’s younger brother who was three at the time. Unknowingly this might have been one of the reasons he grew up to be an Episcopal priest.

My maternal Grandmother Mima was always concerned about her figure as well as her daughters’. My mother used to tell me that when she was a teenager her mother told her that having a cigarette rather than something to eat would be better for her figure. Selling cigarettes as a diet aid was brilliant until they started killing people.

I think for Mima the thing that cigarettes did best was dull her taste buds to the point that nothing tasted good so why bother eating.

Of course for all my Grandparents cocktail hour was more than an hour long. I think that drinking so much that you forget to eat dinner was a big diet aid. Not that bourbon was calorie free, but if it caused enough fighting someone was bound to storm out of the room and go to bed without dinner rather than sit down at the table together. Oh how times have changed in my generation. No one produces all their own food, none of us smoke and I don’t think that any of us drink our meals. We might be heavier, but I think we are happier.

No Armpit Drinks Please

Try as I might to stop writing about bad service, or terrible food or questionable management at eating establishments sometimes I just have to break my own rule and share a particularly horrible experience. Here is my one disclosure, please do not continue reading this if you are eating your dinner right now. Fair warning.

Today I went to a charity luncheon to support an organization that is doing good work in our community. You know the type of thing. A giant room full of women with five uncomfortable men scattered about. I am all for charity spreading their message and getting a few bucks to keep their doors open. What happened at this event in no way should reflect badly on the organization that was benefiting from it.

After visiting with old friends from far and wide I rarely see except at these things I joined the table I was asked to sit with. We were lucky enough to be right by the kitchen door, which meant that the staff did not have far to go when we had a need. When we arrived at our table our perfect for ladies who lunch salad with chicken was sitting at our places. On the table were carafes of water and tea.

Being polite Southern women we poured each other glasses of tea and passed around the tiny sauce boat of dressing, each trying to take only a drop or two since eight of us needed to share the serving that usually would cover two salads.

After all the pouring was done, one friend took a sip of tea and declared, “Oh no, it’s sweet tea.” Now I may live in the south, but any caterer worth their salt knows better than to serve middle aged women who try to avoid sugar at all costs sweet tea without warning them. One woman asked a sever if they had any unsweet tea and without much trouble a new carafe was delivered to our table. But what to do with all the glasses full of brown sugar water?

My table neighbor and friend K asked a server who was passing bread if she could have a new glass. She quickly disappeared into the kitchen and upon her return with breadbasket and tongs in her hands she leaned one side of her body into K and offered her a new glass that she was carrying tucked tightly into her armpit. I wish that I had a video of our faces as she pulled the glass from rim to stem fully through her sweaty shirt, keeping her arm tightly squeezed against her body so she would not drop the glass. K took the glass trying to touch as little of it as possible and placed the offending crystal as far from her plate as she could.

K looked at me with that did you see what I saw look and we both almost spit our lunches out on our plates in disgust with the thought that a server in any sort of establishment thought that it was sanitary to carry anything in her arm pit, let alone something someone might put to their lips. The fact that the server in no way thought this was acceptable is the scary thought. Imagine what might be going on in the kitchen.

Consider this my public service message to cater waiters, servers and restaurant owners everywhere – Never and I mean Never Ever carry anything in your armpit. Outside of the one in one million person with an armpit fetish no one wants to touch, let alone eat or drink with anything that has been tucked up there. I guess to the manager of this place he might have thought he did not need to cover this is training, but I guess you do.

The Fine Line

I am a person who likes to get things done, has big ideas about improving things and has a hard time keeping my opinions to myself. I feel like most problems in the world can be solved if worked on and I see so many things that need work. On the other hand I really enjoy doing fun things that have no real world changing purpose other than making me happy. Then there is the middle ground, the stuff I need to do to keep me healthy and well, not really fun and not making an impact on any one but my family and me.

How to walk that fine line between taking care of myself, doing what is needed for my husband and child, helping my friends, and the world and then the just plain selfish hedonistic things is a balancing act I’m not sure I’ve mastered yet.

When I was first out of college I worked a full-time traveling salesman job and had a catering business on the side. That left no time whatsoever for me to have much fun, nor really give back. My mantra was to make as much money as I could; it was the 80’s after all. Greed was good, was the theme of the decade.

Thank goodness I outgrew that mode, the greed one, but I still worked too hard and did too little self-care. I also had not learned the word, “No.” If I noticed a problem I often volunteered to fix it. Frequently I was the one pointing out problems, which meant that I was practically obliged to offer to help.

My worst enemy is my mouth. I just did not know when to keep it shut. Just because I could help fix a failing system did not mean I had to be the one that did it. I blame my father for my shortcoming, or over confidence in this area. He told me from a very young age that I could do anything. I came to believe he was right about that, everything except climbing the robe to the top of the gym ceiling. He was also the one who taught me that if I could not do it to talk my way out.

Now, I would like to do less, offer fewer solutions, let others figure things out, or just live with an imperfect world. That is hard on me. I practically have to go through life with blinders on. It is not that I have the only answer or even the right answer; I really just want to get the conversation started and have others help fix the world.

So please understand if I turn down your request for help, or don’t volunteer I’m working on finding balance. That means I have to be less bossy, not in charge, have fewer opinions. You think I can’t do it? Yeah I know.

What’s Your Dream?

Today while I was having lunch with a friend I will just call, “E” she said, “It was a terrible day when I realized I had missed my window to become a professional tap dancer.” Now E is younger than I am so I challenged her on the idea that she was too old to do anything. See if she were too old, that meant that I was too old to do anything and I am not admitting that yet.

As I delved deeper into this passion for tap dancing that was unknown to me before today I learned that E had never even taken one tap dancing lesson, let alone missed a professional opportunity. She followed up the tap dancing dream with one as a back-up singer/tambourine player in a band. Again, not something she had actually tried out for, yet was still a dream.

Now I am not sure what the demand for “Professional” tap dancers is, but I certainly think that E is much too young and capable to be giving up any dream she really has. I am sure that there is a band out there somewhere that would take her on with tambourine in hand to sing back up for a few numbers. If they threw her a couple of bucks at the end of the night that would qualify her as a pro too.   If she owned tap shoes, she might do a few steps while harmonizing and then that too would satisfy her tap dancing dream.

Back when I weighed more than a hundred pounds than I do now I used to dream to be able to walk into Neiman Marcus and try anything on in the “Misses” Department, better known as the regular sized clothing. That dream seemed as far away to me as E’s tap dancing dream. But like E, I had not done anything to try and fulfill it.

Then I started. I made a bold declaration that I was going to lose weight. I practiced, like a tap student, I studied, and I worked my ass off literally. Suddenly my dream was not a dream, but a car ride away from Neiman Marcus. Last month when I drove Carter and her friends to Charlotte I decided to make my dream come true.

Alone, with no one to witness a possible snubbing by the high and mighty Neiman’s sales clerk I went into the store. I wandered through the designer collections. Sales women fawned over me, practically begging me to try on the dresses I eyed. After taking my time looking at all the tiny clothes that represented my dream I agreed that a nice young man named Nate could carry in an armload of items for me to try on.

One dress, followed three blouses, five sweaters, two skirts and four pairs of slacks, each one fit or was too big. Nate was quick to get me smaller sizes and find me other items he thought would work well on me. I could have worn them all. Poor Nate worked very hard for the one blouse I bought. See my dream was not to buy everything in Neiman’s, just be able to fit into it.

So E, let’s go take a tap dancing class. It only takes one tiny step to fulfilling your dream. I also know a band that might let you stand in the back and sing along. It’s never too late to fulfill your dream and certainly not if you are still just in your forties.

 Happy Non-Labor Day

I know the name is Labor Day, but it really should be called Non-labor Day since it is traditionally a day off from work. I am married to a person who is almost always working so getting Russ to take off a day is difficult. That is unless he is at my family farm with our sweet dog Shay Shay. So when Russ suggested we go to the farm for the day I knew it was the perfect way to get him into a non-labor frame of mind.

Although we all love going to the farm and have never brought anyone there who did not beg us to go back we somehow have not been once this summer. Perhaps it was because we were in Africa and Maine, maybe it was even because while we love the farm it is damn hot there in the summer. So celebrating the last day of traditional summer at the farm relieved some of my guilt for not visiting my parents all summer.

Carter got to drive her car, “Katherine,” up to show my father how much she loves the present he gave her for Christmas. I got to needlepoint all the way there and back and some in between. Russ got to have Shay Shay sit on his lap and look out the window with the happiness anticipation look on her face that read, “We’re going to my favorite place where I run FREEEEE!” At least that is how Russ interprets her look.

To none of our surprise it was damn hot there today. Good thing we brought our swim suits along with our friends the Toms and their dog Millie. Lynn and Logan Toms are the extra children my parents wished they had because they are so nice to my mother and father. Their daughter Ellis is also like a granddaughter, which doubles the number of kids they actually like.

After lunch at our regular Mexican restaurant where Carter and Ellis got to eat in my Dad’s regular booth alone while the adults sat at a separate table we went back to the farm to laze away the afternoon by the pool.

Since Russ personifies everything that Shay Shay does he insisted that our brown dog was hot and needed to go swimming. Shay hates going in the water, but Russ says since she is half Labrador she should be a great swimmer. She is not. Just like every other time she has been in the pool she clung to the closest human by the sharpest points of her toenails, shivering and looking like a wet rat.

After her first dip she jumped out of the pool as fast as she could and shook herself off all over my mother. Not good form from a guest at my mother’s house. After an hour or so Russ decided that Shay was hot again even though if she was she could have jumped in the pool herself. This time he put her on a raft so that he could save the delicate skin on his shoulders from certain clawing. This suited her better and she tentatively stayed on the float while Russ and Carter played with her a while.

The way I see it is Shay’s psyche was sacrificed so the Russ could take the day off from work and play with his dog, his child and his friends. Since Shay loves Russ more than any thing, human or animal I think she is fine with this. Perhaps she even plays up her dislike of the water so Russ feels needed to save her from drowning, even if he is the one making her endure the water. Whatever, she provided the perfect excuse for celebrating Non-labor Day because if we were home Russ most certainly would have worked. So thanks baby Shay, you make us all relax.

So Many Surveys, So Little Improvement

Seems like I get six or seven surveys a day asking how some service I received or product I bought was. Not only do some companies send you one or two e-mail, but my car service department sent me nine different requests to review the same oil change. Hey Ford, if I had a problem you would know it, take my silence as a good sign and stop bugging me.

E-mail is harmless enough and easy to delete, but phone calls to ask me about my service are a line that should not be crossed. Any of my readers certainly know that I have strong opinions and am never shy about letting the appropriate people know when I am very unhappy or very happy.

Today at lunch a group of us got a yummy Nicoise Salad. We thought it should have come with capers, based on our historical knowledge of what a Nicoise salad usually had and the description in the menu. We asked the waitress and she brought us an abundance of capers to add to our lunch, which we greatly appreciated.

She told us that what we got was the chef’s interpretation of the Nicoise Salad. Fine, he can interpret all he wants and I will just order capers on the side. A supervisor later told us that capers were supposed to come on that salad. Since we are regulars at this place and she was new I let her know not to bother trying to sell us any excuses the sous chef wants her to sell us next time. It might not have been the nicest thing in the world to say, but it will save her heartache when she waits on me in the future. I did not need a survey to ask me what was wrong, it was easiest to tell the person I will see regularly how to make sure I am a happy customer.

I like to give feedback so things get better, but what I can’t stand is being asked to spend my time to help someone improve their business and then have them repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Stop asking me ‘cause it is worst that I went to the trouble of telling you and you ignored me.

The world has plenty of ways to give feed back and most of them are public and not nice. Sometimes I read trip advisor reviews and want to have a review of the reviewer. Clearly their standards are not the same as my standards. Sometimes I am more harsh than others just because I am hungry, as was probably the case today according to my friend Carol.

It’s all right to ask for feed back, but please don’t badger customers to death to tell you what they think. They may have been perfectly happy until you started bothering them, take no news as good news.

1950’s Peach and Cottage Cheese Redux

After the drive home from Charlotte with the car full of teenagers I was just wiped out. I started the day by treating myself to a real breakfast this morning which turned out to be more difficult than I thought. There was a very cute French Bistro right near my hotel so since I was working on my Eiffel Tower needlepoint I thought it was the right place for me to go.

I got there well before the post church crowd and was seated at a cafe table outside where I had good strong sun light to stitch by while I waited. And wait I did. A middle aged woman alone is the customer that gets forgotten. I ordered my usual iced tea and scrambled eggs. My tea came quickly, but not my food. No worries I was stitching and enjoying the outdoors.

Long after I had drained my glass a young man who was not my waitress dropped a plate in front of me. Before he could get away I asked for salt and pepper and more tea. The spices arrived quickly which hardly made a difference because the eggs were cold. I eventually flagged down another server and sent my plate back. I was still without any more tea when my second plate of nice hot eggs arrived.

Only the second time I saw my waitress was when I was finished with my meal and needing my check, I never got any more tea. So much for the treat of a real breakfast. I should have stuck to my standard cereal and milk and saved myself the aggregation.

I got home just in time to kiss Russ goodbye before he left for San Francisco. I am hopeful that the earth will be still while he is there this week. I was too tired to go to the grocery and since Carter had sushi available for her dinner I decided just to scrounge something up for myself. I looked at a bowl of perfectly ripe peaches on the counter and decided that I needed to eat them today or tomorrow or lose them all together.
I peeled and sliced two peaches and put them in a bowl. I considered just pouring some milk on the and being done with it when I found a nice container of cottage cheese in the fridge.

How many 1950’s old cookbooks had I seen in my house growing up that had a photo of a lettuce lead with a half a peach and a scoop of cottage cheese topped with half, not a whole one mind you, but half a maraschino cherry? I spooned out a hunk of cottage cheese on my fruit, then turned to my bag of tart dried cherries. After cutting about dozen in half I sprinkled them liberally over the dish and took a bite. Heaven. Sweet, tar, creamy, juicy. Every bit of me was satisfied with these three ingredients. Sometimes they were on to something in the 1950’s and it was so much faster to make it and serve it to myself without aggravation.

Charlotte Three Decades On

I’m writing my blog from the comfort of my Hampton Inn room in Charlotte where I sit alone, needle pointing, watching movies and having major Deja Vu. My purpose for spending a Saturday night alone while Russ and Shay hold down the Durham fort is that I am here solely as a driver. Carter and her 2C Camp Cheerio friends planned a reunion in Charlotte for this weekend.

The overwhelming love of camp and each other made this one-month-out-of-camp get together mandatory. Of course ten fifteen year olds can’t drive themselves so I volunteered to fire up the old Land Cruiser and stuff it full of as many kids from the triangle and Greensboro as I could fit. One generous Charlotte Mom, Melanie offered up her house for the girls to stay at. The plan is that the boys are staying at William’s house, but boy planning is totally different than girl planning so I hope that Mom knows what’s going on.

Hearing girls, hanging out the window of their Mom’s car, scream out “CCCAAARRRTTTEERR,” as they pulled into the meeting spot parking lot made my heart happy. The friendships developed at camp are different than all others so I am happy to act as a bus driver. The bonus is I get a night in Charlotte.

Thirty years ago I used to spend a lot of time here selling mail opening and extracting machines to the growing banking and remittance processing businesses here. North Carolina was the southern most side of my five state territory. I quickly learned that flying to Charlotte on Piedmont Airlines was the way to go, especially since I was trying to rack up enough frequent flyer points to fly to Greece. I miss Piedmont Airlines.

Although Charlotte was always the biggest place in North Carolina it is different now than it was then. Back in the day I used to stay at a Holiday Inn, that was until one morning when the room service clerk delivered my bagel and cream cheese order. Since my job often required me to visit a client’s site very early in the morning I would eat breakfast while doing my hair, it was the 80’s after all and hair was a big production.

This particular morning the clerk brought me blue cheese rather than cream cheese. I called the front desk to let them know of the mistake I discovered after taking a bite. The response of “We don’t have blue cheese,” was an unwelcome discovery. That was when I looked more closely at the small paper cup the odorous cheese had come in. The Holiday Inn did not know they were growing their own blue cheese without a license. I never stayed there again.

Food in Charlotte is much better now than it was then. Beside the mold problem I used to only eat BBQ here. Yes, it was good barbecue, but it was not all that healthy. Today as I pulled into my hotel I noticed than I was surrounded by good restaurants as well as fancy prepared food store Dean and Deluca.

So as Carter and her friends were frolicking at Carowinds in the heat, I was enjoying a yummy lunch of spinach salad and chili lime shrimp at Dean and Deluca – No mold was encountered.

Not Looking at Me Does Not Mean I Won’t Hit You

It’s back to school so it’s back to driving more for everyone so it’s back to local roads being busier than the lazy summer time. No matter if it is a busy time of year or day I have the same routine when I am trying to pullout onto a primary road from a parking lot or secondary place. I look out my side window in the direction opposite I want to go, then I look out the opposing side window and if everything looks good I do a quick recheck of the first side to make sure nothing has changed. Assuming no one is going to come barreling at me I go.

Can someone let me know if the normal rules of the road changed over the summer because today I was almost hit three times by drivers all doing something differently than I do, but all the same way. As I was driving on the primary road at the speed limit I saw a driver in a car stopped on a side street on my side. They looked at me and turned their head and looked the other direction and without turning their head to look back they just pulled out.

If I had been so far away that they had room I guess the third head turn check might have been unnecessary, but that was not the case. Three times today people pulled out either right in front of me heading the same direction or across my lane with not enough room and without looking at me. I began to think my car had donned itself with the cloak of invisibility.

I wish that I had a big loud speaker attached to my car so I could scream out, “Just because you don’t turn back and look at me does not mean I am not here!” as I slammed on the breaks.

This got me thinking about a friend who told me of her sibling who got rid of all the full length mirrors in her house because she did not want to look at her hips since she had put on about fifty pounds. “Just because you are not looking at something does not mean it is not there!”

Gaining 50 pounds is not the worst thing in the world, but if you don’t like it denying it is not going to help. Not looking back at the car barreling towards you does not mean there is room to pull out. People need to pull their head’s out of the sand and face the situation as their reality.

The three drivers that pulled out in to traffic were just lucky I was watching them so carefully. Actually, the second two were lucky the first one did it to me today with more room to spare and made me watch the others more vigilantly. It was hard to believe it happened two more time in a three-hour period.

We all have things we don’t want to face. My friend’s sister has to decide to look in her own mirror. No one can do it for her. But driving affects the rest of the world. So please people, look three times, that last one might save your life.